by James Ellroy
L.A. NOIR
For two solid hours Lloyd dusted print-sustaining surfaces and compared fingerprint points under a magnifying glass. Concentrating on doors, doorknobs and doorjambs, he found overlap smudges and viable latents for thumb and index finger, all “grab” prints likely to have been made by a person walking through the apartment, opening and closing doors behind them. There were also smooth glove prints on the same surfaces, and on the living room bookshelves and the dust covers of the books there. All the left and right thumb and index prints matched to the tune of ten comparison points, and there were no conflicting latents to be found. Meyers and the man who searched his apartment.
For what?
Lloyd looked under the furniture, behind the books. Nothing. He checked the kitchen and dining room; nothing but cooking and eating utensils. The desk in Meyers’s bedroom was nothing but a tidy or tidily rearranged collection of bankbooks, pens, pencils, paycheck stubs and I.R.S. forms, and his closet held nothing but L.A.S.D. uniforms and cheap civilian clothes. Which left the scrapbooks.
Lloyd dusted the spines and held his magnifying glass and penlight on them to assess the results. Seeing smudged latents and what looked to be glove streaks, he began a page-by-page scrutiny of the books. The first two books contained photographs of Gordon Meyers posing with various trophy fish, neatly mounted to the black paper in gummed edge-holders. Lloyd dusted three snapshots at random and got pristine glossy surfaces—no latents; no glove prints.
The third scrapbook was cop memorabilia—candid group shots of sheriff’s deputies in uniform and Meyers himself with jail inmates in blue denim. Lloyd leafed through the book, going cold when he came to a page of snapshots with the corners poking out of their edge-holders, going colder when he saw that the opposite page held two empty photo squares. Thinking, check the back for writing, just like the crawler did, Lloyd fumbled at the snapshot immediately in front of him. When his gloves made the task too unwieldy, he went ice cold, then dusted the crookedly replaced photos, coming away with a perfect left thumbprint on a snap of Meyers and another deputy. Holding his magnifying glass over it, he recalled comparison points from the left thumbs assumed to be Meyers’s. This print was markedly different in whorls and ridges. Lloyd replaced the scrapbook, put the snapshot
SUICIDE HILL
567
in an evidence envelope, packed up his kit and got the hell out of the tidy loner apartment.
*
*
*
Forty minutes later, Lloyd was at Parker Center, handing the powdered snapshot to Officer Artie Cranfield of S.I.D., saying, “Feed to the central source computer, the one with the D.M.V. and armed forces input. I’ll be up in my office. If you score, get me a printout from R&I.”
Artie laughed. “You’re very authoritative today, Lloyd.”
Lloyd’s laugh was humorless. “I’m authorized on this, the big man himself. It’s the cop killings, so please fucking hurry.”
Artie took off at a jog, and Lloyd busied himself arranging the surveillance reports on Louie Calderon that littered his desk. Thoughts of calling Peter Kapek for an interagency confab crossed his mind, then he saw a memo propped up against his phone: Sgt. Hopkins—meet or call S.A. Kapek at downtown Fed bldg.—12/14—0940. He was debating whether to call or roll when Artie returned, breathless, and handed him a manila folder. “I ran the print. He’s one of ours, Lloyd.”
Lloyd shivered and thought: Gaffaney, then read through the L.A.P.D. personnel file, holding a hand over the full-face and profile snaps that were clipped to the first page.
The file detailed the twelve-year police career of Metropolitan Division sergeant Wallace Dean Collins, age thirty-four. His record was impressive: Class A fitness reports and a number of citations for “Meritorious Service.”
Lloyd scanned the list of Collins’s “special assignments.” Surveillance detail, narco, vice decoy, then a transfer to Metro on the recommendation of Captain Frederick Gaffaney. Since his rookie days, Collins had partnered with Sergeant Kenneth R. Lohmann of Central Division, and there was an addendum memo from the Central personnel officer stating that Lohmann was also flagged for Metro duty—on the next available opening. Lloyd took his hand from the snapshot and smiled. Collins was the driver of the car tailing him down Sepulveda. Looking at the fidgeting Artie Cranfield, he said, “How’d you get the file so fast?”
Artie shrugged. “I told the clerk at Personnel Records you had special clearance from Braverton and up. Why?”
Lloyd handed the file back. “Just curious. Take this back to Records, hold on to the photo and be very quiet about this, okay?”
“Quiet as the grave,” Artie said.
*
*
*
568
L.A. NOIR
Lloyd drove to the downtown Federal Building, thinking of angles to cutthroat Gaffaney and kill the murder indictment now being held over his head. As he pulled to the curb at Sixth and Union, the Metro unit sidled to a stop two car lengths in back of him, Collins at the wheel. Getting out and slamming the door, Lloyd’s thoughts moved from blackmail to a double suicide scene to blow Gaffaney’s career along with his own. Then curiosity about Collins crawling Gordon Meyers’s pad took over, and he ran upstairs to Kapek’s office, rapped on the door and said in his most commanding tone, “Come on, G-man. We’re going cruising.”
“Where to?”
“A hot-dog rendezvous.”
They drove east through downtown L.A., Lloyd silent, with one eye on the road and the other on the Metro unit riding their tail behind a slowmoving Cadillac. Kapek fingered his acne scars and stared at Lloyd, finally breaking the tense quiet. “I’ve been forcing myself to concentrate on the first two robberies exclusively, and I think I may have a hypothetical connection between Hawley and Eggers.”
Lloyd’s mind jerked away from the plan he was hatching. “What?”
“Listen: I checked out both men’s bank accounts and got something weird. They both withdrew similar large amounts of cash, on the same dates—October seventeenth and November first. Two five-hundred-dollar withdrawals for Hawley, two six-hundred-buck shots for Eggers. Non sequitur stuff—both guys are strictly check writers. These withdrawals were from their individual accounts—not the joint accounts they share with their wives. What do you think?”
Lloyd whistled, then said, “Vice. I’ve already put in my Vice query, so you call the squad commanders and have them shake down their snitches for specific info. What happened on those dates? Bookies taking heavy action?
Cockfights, dogfights? I don’t buy Eggers or Hawley as dopers, but I could see Sally and Chrissy doing a few snootfuls of blow, with their sugar daddys footing the bill. By the way, how did the families react to the girlfriend bit?
Any feedback on that?”
Kapek breathed out sadly. “Hawley’s wife moved out. Eggers lost his job, because he lied to us about Confrey, and because the big boss at Security Pacific freaked when he heard about the dead cops and blamed Eggers. Eggers’s wife is still up at Arrowhead, and he went up there to work it out. Both Hawley and Eggers are refusing to talk further to us, under attorney’s orders.”
Lloyd said, “Shit. I wrote out a memo requesting that they be held as ma-
SUICIDE HILL
569
terial witnesses to avoid that, then all hell broke loose. By the way, we’re being tailed. There’s a Metro unit in back of us.”
Kapek looked in the rearview. “Is that what this is all about? And what’s
‘Metro’?”
Passing out of downtown into the East L.A. industrial district, Lloyd said,
“Metro is an L.A.P.D. special crimes unit, a diversified attack force. Gang fights in Watts? Send in Metro. Too much dope in schools? Metro shakes down bubble-gummers on their lunch hour. The unit is effective, but it’s full of right-wing wackos. And what this is all about is me being watchdogged. We’re going to the L.A. River and park. Follow me and do what I tell you.”
&
nbsp; Now Kapek was silent. Lloyd turned off Alameda and skirted the Brew 102 Brewery, then took the Water and Power Department road to the embankment that overlooked the bone-dry “river.” The tail car remained fifty yards in back of them, and Lloyd slowed and parked at the embankment’s edge. Checking the rearview a last time, he said, “I’m hoping they’ll think we’re meeting a snitch. Come on.”
They walked down the concrete slope sideways, plaster debris crackling beneath their feet. When they reached the riverbed, Lloyd got his bearings and saw that the old maintenance shack was still there and still mounted on a cinderblock foundation to keep it from washing away during flood season. He pointed Kapek toward it, and they trudged over through an obstacle course of empty wine bottles and beer cans. When they were standing in the shade of the shack’s corrugated tin door, Lloyd tilted his head sideways and caught sight of the two Metro cops peering over the edge of the embankment. “Stand here,” he said. “Keep looking in the direction I take off in, and keep looking at your watch like you’re expecting someone.”
Kapek nodded, looking befuddled and slightly angry. Lloyd walked around the edge of the shack, then climbed the embankment on its opposite side, coming onto level ground behind a line of abandoned cars. Squatting low, he moved down the row to the end, then stood up, seeing nothing but a short patch of pavement between himself and the Metro unit, with Collins and his partner fifty yards away, still holding surveillance on Kapek. Lloyd sprinted to the car and opened the driver’s-side door. The two cops turned around at the noise and started running. Lloyd flipped open the glove compartment—nothing—then noticed an attaché case on the floorboard, “Sgt. K. R. Lohmann” stenciled on the front. He opened it and tore through blank report forms and plastic evidence bags, and was about to give up when his hands brushed a bag that held two glossy photographs. He fum-570
L.A. NOIR
bled the bag into his inside jacket pocket and backed out of the car just as Collins loomed in front of him.
With the open door between them, Collins halted, then approached on tiptoes. Lloyd saw his partner ten yards in back of him, looking scared. When Collins moved into a cautious streetfighter’s stance, Lloyd slammed the door into his legs, knocking him backward onto the ground. Collins got to his feet and started swinging blindly; Lloyd sidestepped the blows and brought him to his knees with a left to the solar plexus. Collins sucked air and held his stomach; Lloyd balled his right fist. The old pain was still there, so he swung a short left uppercut instead. Collins grabbed his nose and fell prone, his legs twitching. Lloyd stood over him and hissed,
“Tell Captain Fred I don’t need a backup.”
The other cop was trembling beside the car. Lloyd stepped toward him, and he backed away. Then Peter Kapek walked over, stationing himself squarely between them. Shaking his head, he looked at Lloyd and said,
“Don’t you get tired of walking all over people? Aren’t you a little old for this kind of shit?”
18
At first he thought it was an awful new kind of rage that took over his whole body, making him ache from head to toe and vomit and see double. Then he thought it was something even stranger—a defense mechanism put out by his brain to keep the truth from driving him where everything was bright red and skunk-stenched. A tagalong puto cold-cocked him and took off with his woman, and if he freaked out and went crazy he was stone fucking dead, because he was the most wanted man in L.A., bullet bait for every cop who breathed.
But confronting the truth and driving the Trans Am skillfully through the hottest part of town did nothing to kill the revolt inside his body, and he couldn’t tell if he was in a hallucination or was the hallucination. At dawn he’d awakened, sprawled across Stan Klein’s body. It all came back, and he got to his feet, reeling, stumbling and puking, and ran outside
SUICIDE HILL
571
to the car. Driving away, he started seeing double and pulled over behind the scrub hedge and passed out. When he came to, it was better, and he drove into downtown Hollywood on side streets. Then it got brutal. Passing the Burger King on Highland, he saw cops handing out pieces of paper to customers; other cops were knocking on doors on Selma and De Longpre and the little cul-de-sacs north of the Boulevard. Cruising by the park two blocks from the Bowl Motel, he saw more cops distributing more paper, this time to the winos who used the park as a crash pad. The motel, Sharkshit Bobby and the money was right there, free of cops, but with the feel of a giant booby trap. Looking up at the palm trees that bordered the place, he started to see triple, then thought he saw snipers with elephant guns hiding inside the fronds. Attack dogs started to growl everywhere, then the sound became the whir of helicopter rotors. When he saw a German shepherd behind the wheel of a Volkswagen, something snapped, and he laughed out loud and rubbed the blood-crusted bruise that covered the left side of his face. He drove to a pay phone and called Louie Calderon at the bootleg number, and Louie screamed that the fuzz had him pegged as the gun dealer, and there was a twenty-four-hour tail on his ass. He hadn’t given up any names, but the heat was huge and Crazy Lloyd Hopkins himself had hassled him.
He’d hung up and made another circuit of Highland. More cops on the street; a group of plainclothesmen house-to-housing the block where he’d stashed the ’81 Caprice. He was about to make a dash for Sharkshit and the money when he noticed a scattering of paper in the gutter. He pulled to the curb, got out and picked up the first sheet he came to. It was the sketch of himself he’d seen in the newspapers, with “White Male, Age 25–33, 5'10''–6'1'', 150–180 lbs.” written below it.
The Bowl Motel gave him a brief come-hither look, then blew up in his mind. Bobby had probably rabbited with the money or the cops were waiting there, trigger-happy and pumped up for glory. All he had left was Vandy. Getting back in the Trans Am, it all came together. Concussion.
Meet Rhonda at Silver Foxes at midnight, get her to make the run to the motel for the money. Promise her a big cut or nothing at all. Vandy was probably hiding out with her cocaine sleazebag friends. Force Rhonda to help find her.
Rice looked at his watch. 1:14, twelve hours since the cold-cock. A wave of nausea hit him, producing stomach cramps that shot up into his head and 572
L.A. NOIR
made his vision blur. Through the pain he got the most frightening idea of the whole horror-show past month:
Control the concussion so you can survive to get Vandy and a shot at the money and kill Joe Garcia.
Rice drove back to Stan Klein’s villa and walked in the unlocked front door like he owned the place. Giving only a cursory glance to Stan Man’s body and the dried lake of blood beside it, he ran upstairs to the bathroom, opened the medicine cabinet and read labels. Darvon, Placidil, Dexedrine, Percodan. He remembered a thousand Soledad bull sessions about dope and dry-swallowed two perks and three dexies. He thought of his boozehound parents walking out the door and never returning and almost retched, then walked into the bedroom and fell down on the bed. The soft surface made him think of Vandy, and when the drugs kicked in, easing his pain and juicing him with a new shaky energy, he wondered if she was worth killing for. 19
Lloyd turned on the light in his cubicle and saw that the papers on his desk had been sifted through. He looked for an inanimate object to hit, then remembered Kapek’s “Aren’t you a little old for this kind of shit?” and the junior G-man’s disgusted goodbye when he dropped him off. Only Fred Gaffaney was worth violence, and he was much too potent to fuck with. Calmed by hatred of the Jesus freak, he took the plastic evidence baggie from his pocket and studied the two photographs inside. The snapshots were of Gordon Meyers and a young man, dressed in civilian clothes, seated at what looked like a restaurant or nightclub table. Meyers beamed broadly in both, but in one photo the young man was slack-jawed, as if caught by unpleasant surprise; in the other he held an arm up to cover his face.
Lloyd studied the face, knowing that he had seen the blunt cheekbones, close-set eyes and crew cut before. Then th
e resemblance hit him. He ran to the switchboard for a newspaper confirmation, and got it from a black-
SUICIDE HILL
573
bordered photo on the second page of the Times: the young man in the snapshots was the late Officer Steven Gaffaney.
Lloyd smiled; the connection felt like aiming a crucifixion spike at Jesus Fred’s heart. He ran back to his cubicle and dialed Dutch Peltz’s number at Hollywood Station. When Dutch answered with “Peltz, talk,” Lloyd said,
“No time for amenities, Dutchman. I’m on the cop killings, and I need a favor.”
“Name it.”
“Dave Stevenson still the commander of West L.A. Station?”
“Yes.”
“You still tight with him?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Will you call him and ask him about Gaffaney, the dead rookie?
Anything and everything, no departmental hype, the real skinny?”
Dutch said, “Call you back in ten minutes,” and hung up. Lloyd waited by the phone, ready to pounce at the first ring. In eight minutes it went off, a siren shriek. He picked it up, and Dutch started talking.
“Stevenson called Gaffaney Junior a punk kid, a pain in the ass and a dummy, unquote. He was resented by his fellow officers because he used to preach religion to them and because he used to brag about his father and how his clout would let him climb the promotion ladder in record time. The kid was also a thief. He stole clerical supplies up the ying-yang and used to rip off ammo from the armory. Interesting, huh?”
Lloyd whistled. “Yeah. Did Stevenson report any of this? Did he—”
Dutch cut in. “Yes, he did. He reported the thefts to Intelligence Division, rather than I.A.D., because that’s Gaffaney Senior’s bailiwick. Dave clammed up then. I just called a friend at Intelligence. He’s going to check into it for me on the Q.T. If he gets something, I’ll let you know. What are you fishing for, Lloyd?”